UK-EU summit could ‘reduce Irish Sea border impact’

A UK-EU summit is likely to pave the way for a deal which could substantially reduce the impact of the Irish Sea border.

The UK wants to reset its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union ( EU) after years of tension.

Monday’s summit is expected to include an “agreement to agree” on trade issues, including the trade in food and agricultural products.

If a full agri-food deal follows, potentially later this year, that will reduce the need for checks and controls on products being sent from GB to Northern Ireland.

It could mean the end of ‘Not for EU’ labelling and the removal of most physical checks on goods.

One food business in Belfast said the reset cannot come soon enough and that immediate measures are needed to help small firms.

BBC News NI first spoke to the owners of Arcadia Deli in 2020 before the sea border started to be implemented. They have faced continuous struggles with the processes needed to get products from GB.

Co-owner Laura Graham-Brown said that new sea border rules on parcels have made the situation much worse in the last month.

“Our partners in England have decided they are not supplying Northern Ireland until further notice until they can get some clarification on how to make it easier,” she said.

“That is our biggest distributor so it is starting to tell on our counter as it becomes increasingly empty.”

She said she would welcome any deal that improves the situation but said something needs to change soon.

“All we want to do is sell cheese and olives. In order to keep stocking our shelves we need something to happen fairly quickly,” she said.

There are no guarantees about the scope of the agreement being negotiated and, on its own, it would not eliminate the sea border.

Stuart Anderson from NI Chamber of Commerce said businesses would take time to analyse the detail of any deal.

“NI Chamber has been calling on the UK government to reach an agreement that is ambitious enough to substantially reduce bureaucracy for all operators in our agrifood supply chain,” he said.

It comes as a poll from Queen’s University Belfast suggests dwindling unionist support for Northern Ireland’s current Brexit deal, the Windsor Framework.

Professor David Phinnemore said there was an “evident drop” in the already limited unionist support that exists for the Windsor Framework particularly among those identifying as “slightly unionist”.

Support among that group has fallen from 51% to 26% over the last year.

Prof Phinnimore said: “If that trend is to be reversed, a closer UK-EU relationship needs to deliver on reducing obstacles to the GB-NI movement of goods.”

The Labour government made a manifesto commitment to seek a new agri-food agreement with the EU which, it said, would aim to “eliminate most border checks created by the Tory Brexit deal”.

The deal would apply to the UK as a whole but would have the biggest impact in Northern Ireland.

That is because NI is still effectively inside the EU’s single market for goods but its supermarkets are mainly supplied from the UK.

The Centre for European Reform (CER), a think tank, said that an agri-food deal would not be of “great macroeconomic significance” for the UK as a whole but that NI would be a “major beneficiary”.

It added: “The closer UK regulations come to those of the EU, the less is the need for border controls on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.”

The Irish Sea border continues to have an impact on Northern Ireland’s politics and its economy.

It came about as the result of a Brexit deal between the EU and UK in 2019, which was revised in 2023, and is now known as the Windsor Framework.

It was agreed that the most practical way to keep the border open between NI and the Republic of Ireland was for NI to follow many EU laws on the regulation of goods.

This means that goods coming from the rest of the UK into NI face checks and controls to ensure they meet EU rules.

For many nationalists in NI, this is a necessary compromise to minimise the impact of Brexit on the island of Ireland.

For many unionists it is a constitutional affront which undermines NI’s place in the UK.

The largest unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), prevented NI’s power-sharing government from operating between 2022 and 2024 in protest.

Agri-food deals from the EU fall into two broad categories: New Zealand-style or Swiss-style.

The EU’s deal with New Zealand means that each party recognises that the other has high food standards and so the frequency of checks on products and paperwork is reduced.

However, New Zealand still sets its own standards and a proportion of goods are still checked as they enter the EU.

By contrast there are no regulatory border controls for trade in agri-food products between Switzerland and the EU.

But the Swiss only have this deal because they agreed to follow EU rules almost to the letter, without much say in setting those rules.

Switzerland is obliged to modify its laws in response to changes in EU legislation, what is known as dynamic alignment, and accept oversight from the European Court of Justice.

A Swiss-style deal would mean controls on GB food products entering NI could be effectively ended.

The EU has previously said this deal would be on offer to the UK but the government had retained an ambivalent stance on whether it would accept this.

However in recent weeks ministers have been careful not to rule it out.

Such a deal will face opposition from Brexit supporters who say it would involve surrendering powers which were returned to the UK after it left the EU.

The Irish Sea is really two borders.

One deals with products’ standards – making sure goods can be legally sold. The other deals with customs – making sure the correct tariffs have been paid.

An agri-food deal would go a long way to removing the standards border but it would leave the customs border untouched.

Businesses in GB would still have to make customs declarations for goods going to NI with the risk that goods would be delayed if the paperwork is incorrect.